Word: wield
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Today's list of endemic woes, topped by economic stagnation and ethnic warfare, certainly add up to a crisis. But it is a creeping, chronic crisis, not one that galvanizes people or calls for leaders to wield a sword of confrontation. Now, when the challenge is mainly to cooperate, to find national and multilateral solutions to long-term ills, today's leaders are coming up short...
...campaign against Republican opponents, so did his model, Roosevelt. But F.D.R. wooed the G.O.P. assiduously -- "and so did Ronald Reagan," says a Clinton aide. "He made heroes of the Boll Weevils," conservative Democrats who delivered the margins of victory for Reagan's program. "All we've really done is wield the stick. That's why it was so easy for Bob Dole to roll us. Everyone likes to be stroked, and Congress, as an institution, demands respect. The irony is that schmoozing and paying homage are second nature to this President...
...Dufour, a director of the Credit Lyonnais, dismisses the fears of Ovitz's critics who fret about conflicts of interest. Ovitz will meet with the bankers often, maybe monthly, but Dufour says Ovitz will wield no operational power over the studio. "Absolutely not. False -- completely wrong," he says. "MGM has its own management. MGM makes its own decisions. We do not tell it what to do; nor will anyone else." His presence, however, will inevitably be felt by studio executives and by moviemakers cutting MGM deals...
This pernicious interference in public school administration is hardly unique to New York City. Across America 15,000 elected community school boards wield substantial power over hiring staff, selecting textbooks, designing curricula and setting salaries. The purpose of such bodies is to ensure local control of education. In theory, at least, school boards guarantee that citizens have a voice in how their community schools...
...Europe kids grow up different -- earlier and tougher. Parents still wield authority; Papa could be Yahweh with a toothache, and Mama could sell her daughter into child prostitution. And because Death hangs around the house like a spinster aunt, the kids must ever be packed off to relatives for whom child care is just the latest of life's dirty tricks. Sometimes the kids run away and never come back. No wonder children in European films often look like stunted adults. Since birth they've been in a dress rehearsal for distress...